Don't buy it. The game's totally broken and bugged

[Alekse11]

I just bought the Gangs DLC during the ongoing Autumn Sale, and came back to the game after a year just to see that it's completely unplayable.

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Paradox officially stopped supporting the game in May and left it with a lot of bugs in its core mechanics, including:

- Prison Labor doesn't work at all. You may have information on how many inmates are qualified to work in a labor room, but once you assign them, none will work,

- Visitations stopped working. The game will tell you how many prisoners are waiting for a visit, but none of them will take place, just as no visitors will ever come to the prison,

- Programs only work for staff. In the case of prisoners, no one is interested in participating in any program (except parolees). As a result, no one is trained in occupational health and safety (but they don't work anyway), and no education or spiritual support is provided. If there is a drug problem in prison or a lot of prisoners start riots because they are, for example, alcohol addicts, you won't do anything about it, because therapies and rehabs don't work either,

- Schedule is no longer binding. If you set a time for prisoners to Yard or Shower, but they have their Hygiene or Freedom needs met, they will not act as the schedule says them to. Instead, they will remain in their cells or walk around the prison as during Free Time.

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I haven't been able to find mods in the Workshop that fix these bugs, so I don't recommend purchasing the game. These are such important mechanics that playing without them is terribly burdensome and frustrating.

[The Queen Salis]

3 of those problems sound like the privileges issue.
prisoners need to have the "privilege" of visits, programs and work MANUALLY ENABLED

[Ganna]

prisoners might also not being doing those things because they are suppressed too much.

[Docsprock]

Partial truth there.

Visitation is indeed broken since the last update. No visitors come and it has the expected impact. I compensate by having many more phones available.

Schedule is also broken. Its pretty much Free Time all the time. If you schedule 'Yard', prisoners will go to their cells, Common room, Canteen, and sometimes even the Yard.

No issues with Programs or Labor.

[clay gamer]

Originally posted by Docsprock:

Partial truth there.

Visitation is indeed broken since the last update. No visitors come and it has the expected impact. I compensate by having many more phones available.

Schedule is also broken. Its pretty much Free Time all the time. If you schedule 'Yard', prisoners will go to their cells, Common room, Canteen, and sometimes even the Yard.

No issues with Programs or Labor.

Visitor is weird for my prison, I have 3 visitation rooms, 2 that touch the outside and one that is just inside the prison, only the inside one gets visitors.

[The Queen Salis]

not saying the game ISN'T broken but the privileges thing is real.
at some point it was made so nothing is enabled by default instead of it being sensible.

[»SoD« Thekillergreece]

I'm having no issues with what you said. Try produce a video and we can help you figure it out.

[Docsprock]

This makes me wonder if DLC makes a difference. I have none and certain things are definitely bugged. And no, I will not buy all the DLC just to have a bug-free game.

[Tokogawa [GER]]

Originally posted by Docsprock:

This makes me wonder if DLC makes a difference. I have none and certain things are definitely bugged. And no, I will not buy all the DLC just to have a bug-free game.

yeah same for me. I have none of the DLCs, not even the free ones, and my Game is working bugfree (as far as I know)

If I had a Problem it turned out it was my mistake. Examples:
> Personal room food wasnt being eaten, the Personal just ate at the snack machine all the time and the Tables were full of dirty dishes. Turns out you need a specifically designated small kitchen for each Personal room. I permanently assigned 2 cooks to a very small kitchen with only 2 sinks and now my Personal rooms are perfectly clean

> Protective Costuny being killed because they went to the giant, normal visitation room. Turns out the fix was assigning a specific, small visitation room directly in their block (I had them seperated with Personal areas so they dont leave by themselves). Now it works perfectly and they cant even smuggle stuff in anymore